Charlottesville, VA – April 26, 2007 – Once again providing evidence of the company’s market-leading commitment to developing single board computer solutions that not only offer outstanding performance in their own right but that also provide straightforward technology insertion opportunities for existing customers, GE Fanuc Embedded Systems today announced the PPC9A, the latest addition to the company’s PowerXtreme family of 6U VME single board computers.
At the heart of the PPC9A is Freescale’s latest PowerPC processor, the dual core 8641D operating at 1.3 GHz. The PPC9A – which is 2eSST-capable – supports up to 4 GBytes of DDR2 memory, and up to 1 GByte of Flash memory. Unparalleled flexibility is provided through the provision of not only two PMC/XMC sites (PCI-X 133 MHz/8-lane PCI Express) supporting I/O via P0 and P2, but also GE Fanuc’s unique AFIX (Additional Flexible Interface Xtension) site that allows custom functionality to be added to the board at minimum cost and in minimum time. Standard AFIX modules for graphics, SCSI, 1553, digital I/O and Flash memory are also available.
“The PPC9A is the latest in a long line of products designed specifically to provide a simple upgrade path for our existing customers, while featuring a level of performance that will be extremely attractive to new customers,” said Richard Kirk, Product Manager at GE Fanuc Embedded Systems. “By leveraging the high bandwidth of PCI Express for onboard connections, it gives users the performance benefits of serial switch fabrics, but maintains total VME compatibility. No other single board computer surpasses it in terms of raw performance, and it clearly leads the market in terms of flexibility in the range of functionality it offers.”
With two Gigabit Ethernet 10/100/1000 Base-T ports, two USB 2.0 ports, and six serial ports, the PPC9A – which is available in five air- and conduction-cooled variants – is highly specified in terms of communications and I/O, while the provision of up to 1 GByte of write-protectable Flash memory, 128 Kbytes of non-volatile RAM with Autostore and a Serial ATA disk interface means that storage is equally well catered for.
In common with an increasing number of GE Fanuc Embedded Systems computing solutions, the PPC9A offers support for the AXIS (Advanced Multiprocessor Integrated Software) development environment. Performance-optimized and designed to accelerate the development and production deployment of complex processing applications, AXIS integrated tools and libraries include AXISFlow, AXISView and AXISLib.
The PPC9A features broad-ranging operating system (Integrity, LynxOS and VxWorks) support together with comprehensive Deployed Test Software (Built-In Test and Background Condition Screening) and is RoHS-compliant.
About GE Fanuc Embedded Systems
GE Fanuc Embedded Systems is a leading global provider of embedded computing solutions for a wide range of industries and applications. Featuring a comprehensive offering that includes Intel® and PowerPC®-based Single Board Computers, sensor processing networking products, avionics interfaces, rugged flat panel monitors and complete computer systems, GE Fanuc Embedded Systems can support the full range of embedded computing needs. GE Fanuc Embedded Systems is part of GE Fanuc, a joint venture between GE and FANUC LTD of Japan. For more information, visit www.gefanucembedded.com.
